Monday, August 30, 2010

For the Climate Change Deniers

The Northeast Passage opened for the first time in recorded history in 2005, and the Northwest Passage in 2007. It now appears that the opening of one or both of these northern passages is the new norm, and business interests are taking note--commercial shipping in the Arctic is on the increase, and there is increasing interest in oil drilling.

5 comments:

In some cases, we do deny it is getting warmer. And in some cases, we deny that it is necessarily a "bad thing" that it is getting warmer. The simple fact of the matter is, it isn't settled.

Ice ages have come and gone, all before man first made metal tools. Did the global warming that happened then come around from "man" and his effect on the environment, or was it just part of the cyclical nature of weather and environment?

As for modern day "GW" we have to ask, is it really happening? It appears in some places to be happening, and in other places it appears to be reversing.

There are obviously affected areas where temperatures appear to be on the rise, and other places where temperatures are falling and new ice is forming (the Antartic shelf and parts of Greenland).

NASA's ASTER satellite is investigating and discovered something a little odd. Temperatures at ground level in some locales are warmer than in previous years, but the temperatures of the air at elevations above 500 feet or so IIRC, from the ground remain unchanged. This doesn't fit well with the current GW theory.

The "heat island" theory is proving true, thanks to ASTER, and areas with large chunks of concrete (LA, Denver, Chicago, NY, KC, etc) exhibit higher temps in and around their metropolises. Year after year, the measured temps seem to be higher in the cities, even if the rural areas nearby aren't experiencing the same phenomenon.

Assuming that GW truly is happening, and on the scale that the believers are saying it is, and that man is indeed causing it, we have to also ask, is it necessarily a bad thing?

Food is easier to grow in warm climates, and as we can see here, passages that allow for quicker and less risky shipping open up.

All of this assumes that Hapgood wasn't correct, and that we won't be facing an entirely different scenario with regard to the icecaps.